Foraging on the verge of extinction: are fisheries a threat to the critically endangered Rapa Shearwater?
9 April 2025
Last update: 09/04/25 14:02
The latest Paper of the Month for Bird Conservation International is Tracking the non-breeding range of Rapa Shearwater Puffinus myrtae, a Critically Endangered seabird of the South Pacific Ocean and is available as open access.
With probably less than 100 adult individuals worldwide, the Rapa Shearwater is on the brink of extinction. This seabird nests in burrows on a few islets on the island of Rapa, in the southern part of French Polynesia. For several years, the Polynesian Ornithological Society (SOP) has been making considerable efforts to halt this disappearance, in partnership with the inhabitants of Rapa. Goats used to live on the islets where the birds nest; they were removed in 2021.
Raspberry and guava trees are also removed from the islets, to ensure the development of native only vegetation. Camera traps confirmed the predation of chicks by introduced rats, so an eradication campaign has been carried out in 2023 – its efficiency will hopefully be confirmed in 2025. A final potential threat to the Rapa Shearwater could subsist at sea: the risk of fishery-bycatch mortality where the species forage along the year. To assess this threat, geolocators were deployed on a few adult shearwaters visiting their breeding burrows. 1 gram-only in weight, the logger was fixed to a ring travelling on a bird’s tibia. In 2020, one of the devices was retrieved from shearwater ‘02’ and revealed the oceanic waters visited by the bird over the course of an entire year.
This witness did not visit areas of intense fishing, its non-breeding range being closer to Point Nemo, far from any land, than to the major fishery activities off Chile or in the central Pacific. Rapa Shearwaters should be safe from fisheries.
The future of the Rapa Shearwater will therefore depend mainly on the success of the rat eradication programme, with the hope that the deserted burrows will be recolonised by surviving adults and immatures. We all hope to be able to tell a good recovery story in the near future…
Long life to Rapa shearwaters!
The paper “Tracking the non-breeding range of Rapa Shearwater Puffinus myrtae, a Critically Endangered seabird of the South Pacific Ocean“, by Frédéric Jiguet, Jean-Claude Thibault, Paul Dufour and Tehani Withers, published in Bird Conservation International, is available as open access.
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